Theory Into Practice

Last weekend I was lucky enough to participate in the FSC BioLinks course "Introduction to Springtails" led by Pete Boardman, and this week I've been trying to embed a few of the things I learned by putting them into practice.

Although the drought broke at the weekend it's rapidly warming up again now, so I started by trying out Pete's "pot knocking" technique which yielded quite a few species at the weekend. This turned up several Orchesella cincta:



a couple of Tomocerus minor (confirmed by microscopy):



and a single Isotoma viridis. I also revised my photography technique to try to improve the quality of the images I am getting.

After that I had a go at sweeping the White Clover in the garden. Even though the flowers have gone over I was hoping this would turn up Sminthurus viridis, but no luck I'm afraid. What I did find were several Deuterosminthurus pallipes, mostly form repandus but also my first ever purple nominate form - which annoyingly I lost while trying to get a photo (so you'll have to take my word for it!). The other thing I found were a lot of Poduromorphs which I'm still struggling to identify - one of the Hypogastruridae I think??





Roll on the advance FSC BioLinks springtails course in January so I can get my teeth into these!